Incendiary
by Blue Mage Quartet
Summary: A series of ficlets looking at the role that weaponized fire has played in Rebecca Chambers' life. 3. Billy, Rebecca, and a fire key that opens the doors blocking their progress- at least, once they survive a horrendously mutated bug.
1. Molotov

Incendiary

AN: So, Rebecca seems to use/encounter situations involving fire a lot. Molotov cocktails, flame sprays, exploding facilities, etc. So my brain working the way it does, decided, "WHY NOT WRITE ABOUT IT?"

And thus this came into existence. Hope you enjoy and more will come!

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><p>Her combat boots make the softest of steps as she slowly treads across the filthy tile of the men's restroom. She can't find the time to be self conscious of the grime encrusting the long abandoned urinals. Her eyes catch her reflection in the mirror and even in the dim light from the sole flickering light bulb she looks more scared than she's ever been.<p>

Billy lopes past with exuberance as he spots something. Rebecca's head inclines as she follows the movement of her partner.

"_Should I look away?" _A light blush tinges her cheeks as she thinks he might be running to use one of the stalls but she relaxes slightly as the ex-Marine crouches downward to take the cap off the container of kerosene.

He procures from the back pocket of his jeans an empty wine bottle, and Rebecca can't help but steal a brief glance at his well defined backside.

"Too bad there's none of the good stuff left," Billy grumbles as he fishes a small wad of newspaper from his seemingly bottomless pockets and the medic wonders where he got _that _as well.

"Did you scavenge all this from the train?" She asks and wonders if she should've been more observant in her scouring of the compartments as well. What if by some off chance, there had been weapons on some of the passengers, or spare ammunition? And she had been too frightened to look?

His handcuffs jingle, the only sound in the room apart from water dripping from rusted faucets, as he repeatedly flicks the lighter and swears each time it doesn't light up. "Thought I might find _some_ use out of the stuff so I took it. But maybe I was wrong…"

"Ha!" Billy says in triumph as the small flame finally flickers into existence.

The small sphere of light pulses with life, a small beacon of hope in their miserable situation. Rebecca wonders, as the shadows dance across the wall and Billy dips the newspaper into the kerosene, if she's ever been in a place as dark as this.

"That makes this the second time tonight I got lucky! If we get the hell out of here, Rebecca, remind me to buy a lottery ticket."

Billy stands up from his crouch, wine bottle grasped tightly in his right hand. The rolled up newspaper sticking out is crackling with fire.

Rebecca is about to ask him what he's going to use the molotov cocktail for but the finger he brings to his lips silences any further conversation.

And then they hear it. The sound of flesh popping like bubble wrap that makes Rebecca wretch. The wet, uneven footsteps that _shloop _across the floor. The leech zombie rounds the corner, it's frame seizing in the reflection of the mirror and the S.T.A.R.S. member fleetingly wonders if she had left the door open.

It's features are roiling, melting away into a monstrous copy of the man whose portrait hung at the top of the stairwell in the foyer.

Rebecca scrambles into firing stance, her feet spread and shoulders locked but before she can squeeze the trigger of her Beretta the leech man is flailing, making an unholy screeching sound as flame consumes it. It's top half breaks and dissolves with a hissing sound, the legs without a torso convulsing and expanding before following suit, sinking towards the floor in a sizzling yellow-brown puddle.

She tries to subdue the slight trembling in her limbs as the acid bubbles on the floor and almost jumps as Billy puts a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"You doing alright, Rebecca?"

Rebecca manages a trembling nod before speaking, "Was discovering that those things are flammable the first lucky thing tonight?" Her mind wanders back to the small fires in the dining cab, the first leech man and the same horrible screeching sound that she had been quick to dismiss as imagination.

"Well, that was one of them," Billy tells her as she places her handgun back in the holster on her hip. He walks forward towards the door of the bathroom without looking back, their terrifying (to Rebecca, at least) encounter forgotten as fast as it had ended.

He turns around as she begins to follow him in earnest, ready to leave this empty room of the facility behind. He looks down and his eyes meet hers as he smiles.

"The first lucky thing? Meeting you."


	2. Grenade Launcher

AN: SOoooooo. Chapter 2. that took me a while. I apologize for taking sooooo long guys, but here's something! Thanks for reviews and criticism alike, hope you enjoy!

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><p>Rebecca's footsteps seem to echo impossibly loudly as she steps into the tiled hallway on the second floor of the Umbrella Training Facility. Billy's boots reassuringly <em>click-clack <em>in behind her as she dutifully sweeps her field of vision, eyes trained for any movement.

A few feet in front of her and to her right was yet another door that contained God knows what and past the door, the hallway opened up to an elaborate stone staircase and from, what Rebecca could make out, an open ended observatory. Polished archways supported by stone columns and another door barred by a pair of crossed swords stood at the end of the landing past the staircase.

Rebecca could almost _feel _Billy's eyes rolling as he moved in closer beside her. "It's surprising these people ever got any work done considering half of the damn doors are locked." He paused in front of the door, handgun at waist level, readily able to draw and fire. He inclined his head towards the door. "Well, care to see what's behind door number one?"

And though he is smiling and his tone light, Rebecca knows the former Marine is serious. Too many times that night the smell of rot had staggered towards them, cloaked in ragged tatters of clothing, ashen-grey fingers, flayed to the bone, grasping for a purpose that withered brains could no longer comprehend. The rookie medic of STARS had heard lurching footsteps, soft, uneven, pulpy and wet with decay, stumble as shredded vocal chords moaned, hungry and lost.

Rebecca dispels the unwanted images and sounds of the victims of the T-Virus- _that's what they really are_, she thinks- with a shake of her head and takes a deep breath in an attempt to steady her nerves. Dwelling for too long on the impossibility of what had occurred that night would only make things harder.

"Ready if you are." She lies, and hopes Billy does not notice the shaking of her hands.

The door creaks open, terribly loudly after what seems like an eternity, a cocktail of fear and adrenaline thrumming in her chest and gnawing at her stomach. The room that greets her sight is plush with décor; several framed paintings lay untouched near boxes awash with dust. Ornate carved marble statues of a hooded man and a woman holding a crown above her head decorate the room, and a similar bust sat in front of the unlit fireplace. It was a touch of decadence and refinement out of place in a facility so full of horror.

Something metallic and round in front of a drab green couch catches Rebecca's eye at the same time she hears a skittering, rustling sound _tap-tap-tap_ its way across the carpeted floor. A queer hissing sound fills her ears and Rebecca brings her Beretta to firing stance.

"A cockroach…" she has time to half mutter bemusedly as one of the creatures lunges at her. Larger than it has any right to be, the sheer size and weight bowls her to the floor. Gleaming red eyes stare sightlessly as multiple, spindly appendages pin her down and scrabbling pincers seek to close around her throat. A sour smell, like rotting fruit overripe in the sun, permeates Rebecca's nostrils and she tries not to gag.

"Get. Off!" And suddenly the burden on her chest is relieved as Billy Coen is at her side, ramming the insectoid creature with his shoulder. The handcuffs dangle from his left hand as he steadies the shotgun against his shoulder and fires and the monster's life ends in twitching limbs and ichorous, greenish yellow blood that smells of swamp water.

Rebecca breathes in, her body trembling more than she'd like to admit as Billy gives her a hand.

"You alright?"

Rebecca hears rather than sees the keening sound of another of the creatures as it leaps at the unprotected back of her partner. Her hands jerk as she fires, the Parabellum round finding its mark between bulbous red eyes and the abomination dies with a hiss.

She takes the hand the twenty six year old marine had earlier offered and levers herself up. Her eyes meet his and she blushes.

"I am now. How many times is that you've saved my life? I think I might've lost count." Her sincere gratitude is tinged with sheepishness as she casts her eyes to the ground.

Billy leans down and tips her chin up with his hand and looks into her eyes as he speaks, "Hey now, none of that. This isn't some kind of competition, Rebecca. It doesn't matter who saves whose life; we made a promise that we're getting out of here together, and you'd best damned believe I'm going to keep it."

He lets her chin go and Rebecca is able to keep it from dropping again if only out of shame. Billy crosses his arms and continues. "If you were half as useless as you seem to think you are, dollface, we'd both be dead on that train and you know it. I didn't get this far on my own; don't discount what you've done."

Rebecca's face is cherry red at this point and she finds herself unable to express her gratitude. The newly minted member of S.T.A.R.S. had had so few opportunities to prove her own capability and usefulness to her Bravo Team squad mates. Hearing that she was able of pulling her own weight from a man she'd known for half a night meant more than she could express.

Billy perceptibly picks up on Rebecca's flustered reaction and motions towards the still twitching corpse of the creatures they had killed. "The hell you think those things are?"

Blue-green eyes turn towards the nearest creature. A long, fragmented body covered in a segmented carapace with multiple spindly appendages covered in fine, bladelike hairs for sensing prey. The bulbous eyes and pincers remind Rebecca of a praying mantis, yet this creature lacked the elegance of the predatory insect and seemed more of a sloppy amalgamation of grasshopper, cockroach, and fly. Rebecca is half tempted to squash the insect's head under her heel as rank blood starts to spread underneath it, staining the carpet floor.

"Dead."

With his boot Billy toes the still body of the one Rebecca had shot through the eye, the edges of his mouth curling downward into a frown. "Works for me. Big ass scorpions, hybrid insect monsters bigger than a dog-"

"Let's not forget the_ actual _zombie dogs." Rebecca interjects.

"Shit, it's like we're in some 60's horror movie."

Rebecca delicately steps over the bleeding corpse of the insect as she scans the rest of the room. "Yeah, well, wake me up when it's time for the credits."

Her partner grins and opens his mouth to say something but is stopped short. His eyes trail over to the dust coated couch Rebecca had noticed before receiving a face full of mutant insect and he walks over.

"Hey, didja get a look at this?" He beckons Rebecca to his side, movement accompanied by soft jingling of handcuffs.

She comes to him, kneeling at his side. Discarded almost haphazardly on the worn carpet in front of them, like a forgotten plaything, is a grenade launcher, with a revolver style chamber and an easily grippable stock steadied against the shoulder for more precise control. Rebecca vaguely recalls one of _visually _similar make carted around by her fellow Bravo Team member Forest Speyer- if the firing mechanics or caliber rounds utilized were different Rebecca was unable to ascertain.

"We could've used this about, I don't know, half the damn night ago," Billy grumbles, reaching for the grenade launcher and hefting it in his muscular arms. He takes a shooters stance, hips shoulder length apart and arms steady, testing the feel and weight of the launcher with practiced ease. "S'different than the rifle mounted M203's or MK19 Automatics we used in the Corps, but I bet it works pretty damn well all the same."

"Ever used one of these?" Billy turns to Rebecca, offering the launcher to her. She takes it and mimics the firing stance Billy used earlier and feels a bit ridiculous.

"Can't be all that hard_,"_ she says, fingerless gloves palming the round revolver chamber- weirdly, the cold, smooth steel provides an abstract sense of comfort and protection. "Point at something and squeeze the trigger until dead."

Rebecca can feel the smirk on Billy's face and she smiles herself as she unloads the grenade launcher. The grenade shells are cased with a silver lining

"What kind of payload is this?" She asks and has to restrain herself from rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly.

Billy takes the three 37mm rounds from Rebecca's palm and the brief contact of his uncovered hand against her gloved hand gives her goose bumps. He eyes it thoughtfully, hand on chin. "Looks to me like your standard explosive round. High explosives like this will be more than enough to blow our way out of here, though there're a lot of other kinds; nitrogen rounds, grenades filled with an acidic compound, there are incendiary grenades. Huh, wonder if whoever left this behind left more grenades scattered around. Poor bastard. Ah well, won't see me complaining."

"You said… incendiary grenades?" A spark lights momentarily in Rebecca's eyes to match the heat from any flame, a cunning, almost devious one and for a moment Billy is a little scared by his partner's almost diabolical expression.

"Well, yeah. Used for starting fires, destroying sensitive enemy equipment, I'm sure there are other uses if you wanted to get creative. The chemical compound-"

"Red iron and aluminum powdered together and ignited with a large amount of heat." She relays rapidly to him, the information familiar and quick on her tongue, and Billy is stunned briefly into silence. He gazes at her for a few odd moments, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

She crosses her arms, a thoughtful expression on her face as she puts her hand under her chin. "Well, chromium, manganese, and copper oxide could be utilized as oxidizers for a more specialized purpose, but given that our goal is generally killing things I think red iron should serve."

Her earnest enthusiasm is infectious and Billy realizes for all her knowledge and expertise she is still just an eighteen year old woman.

"Well, yeah, if you want to get technical. Gets hot enough to melt through steel in almost no time so I doubt that anything that gets in our way could stand up to it."

Rebecca turns on her heel to face her companion after rechambering the explosive rounds, reloading the grenade launcher with a comforting _click_. "Do you know how useful those grenades would be against those leech monsters we encountered? Way better than molotovs and easier to aim. Umbrella must have had containment procedures of some kind against these monsters and incendiary rounds were likely a part of that contingency. Surely they left some around!"

She is almost giddy and childlike in her excitement and Billy cannot but help be swept up in the moment of brightness in their so far miserably dark night. Any advantage they could get was one gladly accepted.

"Heh, I guess with your new toy," he says as he points to the grenade launcher and indicates the shotgun he has nestled in the crook of his right arm, "and this baby right here, anything that gets in our way will be dead faster than you can say 'Umbrella'."

He pauses briefly and corrects himself.

"Well, deader."


	3. Fire Key

The heft of the grenade launcher in Rebecca Chambers' hands is an oddly comforting weight, the stock resting in the crook of her shoulder as she ascends what feels like the nine hundred and first set of stairs that night into the large foyer. Billy's boots are close behind as the clears the final step and they both peer around the impractically large, unsuitably grandiose, eerily devoid of life room.

"Out of these two doors, how much do you want to bet they're both locked?" Billy shifts the weight of the shotgun barrel down to his side and runs a hand through his hair.

"Remember that crank we found in that small study and you sent me up the elevator with it?"

Billy nods as Rebecca tries not to shudder, mentally trying to squash the memory of fighting another two of those grasshopper-ant-cockroach unholy chimera of all things Squishy and Buggy.

"It led to a room with a clockwork mechanism and, past that…" she points to a sturdy wooden door, mercifully free of bloody handprints but still worn with age and dust, "it leads out to a balcony with a fountain. You can see the facility entrance from there, s' where I came back in."

"Balcony, huh?" Billy sighs wistfully, "Think it'd be too much to ask to go outside, maybe catch a breather?"

He's smiling at her in that easy manner of his but he also looks a little weary. Rebecca can't exactly blame him; the air of the facility felt...heavy, weighted with something thick and foreboding, as if something was gradually pressing down upon them and making each passing moment more difficult to bear than the last.

She supposes the stench of rot and decay lingering in every corner contributes to that.

The S.T.A.R.S. medic checks the magazine (12 bullets. marginally more than she thought she had left.) of her Beretta M9 and stares at the door with distaste. "Zombie crows."

Her companion leans forward noticeably, almost as if he could not hear what Rebecca had said, his eyebrows raised in a manner she has rapidly grown familiar with.

"Ah."

Billy doesn't have to voice the _why am I not fuckin' surprised._

On the far right side of the room is another one of the doors decorated on either side with statues of knights. Their crossed blades bar entrance to the room beyond, heavy steel forebodingly preventing any attempt at entrance.

"Do you think explosive rounds might blow through those statues?" Rebecca queries, her voice tinged with hope as she anxiously toys with the pink choker around her neck.

Billy shakes his head. "Nice idea, but I'd prefer to use ammunition like that against things trying to actively kill us."

"So basically everything else in this godforsaken facility, then." Rebecca crosses her left arm over chest, chin resting on the fingers of her right as she closes her eyes and thinks.

The unlocked door downstairs led to the art room, empty of everything except for the corpses of those nightmarishly large bug experiments. The only other door in that room was embossed in a cyan blue paint evocative of rushing water.

Also, locked.

Going back into the entrance hall would just leave them back where they started, with the eyes of that creepy portrait of James Marcus on their backs, leaving the both of them feeling like their every move was being watched with predatory eyes.

Her eyes open and her line of sight darts over to a console of machinery lined along the wall next to the door that led to the balcony.

"Billy!" She calls him over with a gesture, eyes roving around the chain that is wound to one end of the machinery. As he comes closer she places both hands on the lever of the only machine not broken and tries to turn it.

She grunts, straining against the heavy weight of the chain, trying to lift it by pushing with all the meager strength her torso possesses. Her feet slip on the tiled stone floor as she loses traction trying to push forward too much and for all her efforts, the chain hadn't moved an inch.

"Are you… going to help me out?" She manages through gritted teeth, trying not to give up even though the frustration is mounting and the muscles of her slender arms are burning.

"Don't hurt yourself." Billy's eyes are creased in worry and his voice is concerned, not at all patronizing like she might've expected. He comes to her side and her cheeks are starting to flush that familiar cherry red shade of embarrassment, a sensation that was occurring with increasing frequency when Billy Coen was involved.

"I guess my pathetic display was hardly inspiring." She sighs, the air leaving her lungs in one big exhale, frustration and shame evident in her voice.

"You keep getting down on yourself like that, Rebecca. Have you been paying attention to what you've been doing half the night?" Billy tells her as he squares his shoulders and begins to rotate the lever. His (not inconsiderable, Rebecca notes with awe before angrily staring at her own skinny arms) biceps chord tightly in effort as his body moves like a well oiled machine and the sound of the chain links klink-klinking together as they creak to a start fills her ears, shaking free years worth of disuse with a groan.

"No one even as half as competent as you would've got this far. Marines I've known for years, seen some awful shit, would've cracked long before now. You're young, you're inexperienced, and you might not have the most physical strength. But you're determined and willing to prove yourself and have one of the sharpest minds I've seen."

The lever finally comes to a halt and Rebecca hears the whine of creaking metal. A cage, rusted and bent out of shape (with what Rebecca hopes is age and not the destruction of the bars by some imprisoned experiment) is suspended in midair above the caging area. It swings back and forth and the glint of metal below catches her eyes.

"Besides," he smiles at her, "we're a team. That hardly means I've been doing all the heavy lifting- well, maybe just this once."

He gives her a wink and a thumbs up and the flush returns to Rebecca's face. "Give yourself a little credit, Dollface."

Willing (and entirely failing to succeed at) the pink to recede from her cheeks Rebecca nods slowly, still not feeling convinced of herself but buoyed by Billy's kind words. She turns on her heel, footsteps echoing against the concrete around them as she jogs over to the caging area.

She descends the short ladder gingerly, silently praying for her boots to not slip on blood, gore, or viscera, thank you. That possibility seemed increasingly unlikely as the floor beneath her was covered in a thick layer of dirt and grime. In the corner are more of the steel cages, bent and rusted with age, coppered bars spiraling through the air like tree branches, others overturned with bars snapped, curling outwards.

Something had broken out. Something strong.

"These look bigger than the kennels those dobermen were kept in on the train," Rebecca catches herself thinking aloud, a kernel of worry sprouting in the back of her head. The virus had proved itself capable of cross species transmission and, presumably, the dogs infected on the train had been as much of an accident as everything else- scorpion, notwithstanding.

_If they're experimenting with something larger, something deadlier…_ Rebecca worries the inside of her cheeks with her tongue, hesitant to speculate on what, exactly, Umbrella would be engineering considering the menagerie of horrors she'd had to face so far that night.

Her thoughts briefly meander away to a speck of silver among the grimey, dust covered gray of the concrete floor. Rebecca carefully maneuvers around piles of shit- both figurative and literal- until she can reach and grab the key lying beneath the cage suspended in the air above her.

Upon closer inspection, around the head of the key she sees a design scrawled to look like fire, the metal embossed with a garnet red.

The radio crackles at her waist and she picks up Billy's words, muted slightly with static interference.

"Find anything useful?" There's a note of hope in his voice and Rebecca wonders if he's expecting an ammo cache or perhaps a bomb to blow this facility to hell.

"Just…" Rebecca pauses for a second, trying not to feel monumentally disappointed. Little bit of metal to fit in her palm after all the zombies and personal space invasion by mutant bug monsters.

_Big risks, tiny returns_, Rebecca thinks morosely as she exhales and responds.

"Just a key. Surprise!"

Billy's response is a crestfallen one. "A key? That's all? Dammit. Well, once you get back up here we'll figure out which one of these many,many, _many_ doors it unlocks."

The S.T.A.R.S. medic smiles despite the circumstances and brings the radio close, fingers pressed on the emission button. Any words on her lips are drowned out by the creaking of metal behind her. Rebecca spins around on her heels, grenade launcher nestled in the crook of her shoulder with finger on the trigger as the radio skitters on the floor forgotten. Her feet are spread for a firing stance as the grate in the caging area hits the ground and is crushed under the scuttle of what seems like endless skittering legs.

She doesn't even have time to fire, to shout for help as some_thing _is upon her. She cries out, more in surprise than pain as she is swept up, the grenade launcher knocked from her grip and clattering to the floor of the caging area. It seems like the world is rushing up, up, and a fetid smell permeates the air as she struggles in between what feel very much like large, serrated claws.

Rebecca squirms helplessly, her range of motion sorely handicapped. She looks up, trying to ascertain what kind of monster has her in its grip.

"Jesus shit," she swears. "A _centipede_?"

A very tiny, indiscernible voice, a whisper in the current loud chaos of her mind, the one that isn't overwhelming the rest of her senses with adrenaline, panic, with fear, _jesus, all those skittering legs! _says, _Somehow, I'm not surprised._

The giant insect-arachnid- fucking bug monster- whatever the hell it could be called, Rebecca didn't specialize in entomology, aimlessly peers its oversized head as it clambers from the caging area. Its tiny eyes, beady and bulging, waver in the still air.

Rebecca tries again to move, to reach for her sidearm, hell, even a knife, but she's locked tight in the grasp of the mutant bugs arms. Or legs. Whatever she's currently being squeezed in.

The massive centipede begins to amble about the room, almost aimlessly, Rebecca swaying helplessly in its grasp, what seems like mile after mile of body and leg following after in a never ending example of mutated, scientific excess gone wrong.

"Billy!" Rebecca yells, detesting feeling so helpless, so overpowered by something normally insignificant.

"If you were a normal sized bug I would squash you under my boots!" She says angrily, wriggling her torso with little accomplished other than the centipede crushing her tighter against its body.

She sees a flash of movement and hears Billy scrambling closer to the centipede and his shouted expletive almost makes her smile despite herself.

"What the fuck!"

She hears the boom of the shotgun, and a strange hissing sound and a disjointed shuddering, the centipede swaying and Rebecca hopes, prays that Billy hit it somewhere vital, that most of the buckshot didn't spatter harmlessly against the concrete, that it didn't bounce harmlessly off of virally strengthened carapace.

"How am I supposed to kill this thing?" Billy's voice breaks with panic and he sounds about as terror fueled as Rebecca feels.

He steadies the shotgun against his shoulder again, pulls the trigger, pumps it to reload as gouts of blood burst from the centipede's segmented body. Bits of leg and gore crash to the floor, bursting outwards in a red shower and twitching with remnants of life, but the centipede monstrosity is largely undeterred, ambulating around the caging room minus a few apparently auxiliary body parts.

The centipede stops near the barred doors, the fore length of its body rearing up and Billy hears Rebecca cry out, whether from pain or fear he can't entirely discern.

"Shit shit shit," he swears, sweat pooling down from his brow into his eyes. He hurriedly wipes it away, feet pounding on the concrete as he hurries over to where the centipede is rearing about and pulls out his handgun and fires off one, two, three shots into its body.

The first one misses, scoring marks into the concrete pillar behind the monstrosity and that's just twenty bullets remaining now, _great job_, _Coen_.

But next two- nineteen, eighteen- seem to hurt _something- _Billy looks closely and it looks like one caught it in its right eye- and the centipede rears up even further, hissing and spitting from its elongated mandibles. The monster's antenna twitch rapidly almost as if in pain.

Rebecca seems able to move slightly and she turns her head, a small gleam of hope in her eyes even among the terror in her face.

"Do that again!" She urges, straining against the limbs restraining her, brows furrowed in concentration as she grunts.

"You mean _shoot_ it?" He says pointedly and Rebecca stops her struggling to narrow her eyes for one brief, exasperated second.

"Try to hit the forcipules!"

"The _what?" _Billy tilts his head, eyebrows arching in confusion, raising his handgun nevertheless.

"The- the big fucking teeth!"

She gestures as best she can to the large pincer like mandibles jutting out from what could approximately could be called its face. There are too many waving tendril like appendages for Billy to even begin to ascertain what might be an eye or an antenna or god forbid, another one of its legs.

"I'm not risking hitting you!" He says, words sticking thickly to the back of his throat.

Rebecca stops her struggling for a moment and her face softens. She meets Billy's gaze, indecision and worry apparent on his features, and she nods.

"I trust you not to."

Billy is at a loss for words for one brief moment, his grip on the handgun slackening slightly as he processes what he just heard, that the young woman he'd been partnered with for only a precious few hours had faith in him, trusted him, believed in him- something he hadn't felt since Africa, since his sentencing.

That moment seems to be long enough for the many legged monstrosity to gain some semblance of purpose as it rears again, its legs rustling against the floor rhythmically as it drags Rebecca along. Billy raises the Army issue handgun and gazes down the sights at its twitching face, and pulls the trigger.

His shots seem to find their mark, tearing through the flesh of its overly large pincers, goring into its body; a plume of blood and bile spills from its wounds and it looks like to Billy that its blood might be steaming, and he keeps firing, three, four more and the Parabellum rounds lodge themselves into the insects' brain, chunks of gore and bone falling to the ground.

Rebecca is flung from its grasp with a yelp, the creature hissing, sputtering, flailing about in its death throes, whipping about and scoring marks in the concrete support pillars. With one last, dramatic, shuddering hiss, it falls to the floor and stills.

Billy pays no mind to the dead bug and runs to Rebecca's side as she is gingerly rising to her feet, his hand moving to the small of her back to help her up.

Her steps are unsteady at first as if she was unsure that would touch solid ground again. She touches her sides and abdomen briefly, appraising the damage, wincing slightly as she moves closer to her ribcage.

"Are you alright- ah, shit. Stupid question," Billy mutters, ruffling his hair sheepishly as he looks to the side.

"I am now. Thank you," she says, breathing out in relief. She looks over and up at her companion, who is staring pointedly at her face.

"What, is something wrong?" Rebecca's voice pitches up in alarm and she touches her nose, cheeks, and eyes, feeling for anything broken or out of alignment.

"Just… that'll leave a nasty bruise," Billy says softly,reaching out to touch her right cheek where she had reunited artlessly with the ground.

Rebecca doesn't move to break contact as his hand touches her face gently, almost hesitant.

His thumb glides against her cheekbone and the rest of his fingers ghost softly across the slightly tingling skin of her cheek, and she couldn't be entirely sure if it was the sensation of his touch or the persisting pain from her fall.

Neither of them say anything as Billy's hand lingers on Rebecca's face for a little too long.

Finally Billy draws away- not without reluctance, Rebecca notes- and he stoops over to pick up the small key that had been jarred from the S.T.A.R.S. medic's grip.

"Care to see if this key was worth all the trouble?"

Visions of two doors they'd noted in passing flickered in her mind- one in the dining room and one in the same hallway that housed the restroom where they had fought the leech zombie, both embossed in the same red color evocative of flames. She nods, taking the key from Billy and making for the stairs back to the main foyer.

"Next time, I vote that you get kidnapped by the giant monster and play damsel in distress," she tells him as she quietly nudges open the door into the foyer, sweeping her handgun and flashlight around before giving the all clear. She brushes brown bangs threatening to fall in her eyes and sighs wearily as they descend the steps past Marcus' painting and enter the dining room.

"Because shit's getting old."

Billy snaps a smart salute in response, "On your orders, Officer. Don't think I'd do as cute a job at it as you, though."

Billy is spared Rebecca's snappy comeback as she fiddles with the lock on the red door and opens it.

To their surprise the room they enter is well lit, a stark change from the score of rooms they've entered illuminated solely by diminishing light.

Immediately in front of the pair, on the prep counter, sits a hunk of raw meat that neither are quite comfortable with identifying. Blood- still bright and wet and recently spilled- is spattered across the steel countertops.

The only sound in the room is the intermittent dripping of water, drops periodically splashing and dispelling the otherwise eerie silence.

Rebecca scans the kitchen for anything useful, hopes rapidly dimming as the only thing to catch her eye is various cooking utensils. "Their kitchen is locked by one specialized key found in a completely unrelated location and the only thing we find is dirt and blood. Should I be surprised?"

"Not at this point, no."

She folds her arms across her chest in resignation as Billy rummages through the cabinets and drawers and starts to worry if anything they have accomplished that night meant anything other than not dying messily at the claws of some giant bug monster.

"Bingo!" Billy declares, a statement that buoyed Rebecca's spirits slightly; their ordeal in the caging room had been worth something, however small.

"Lighter fluid!" His face lights up jovially as Rebecca nears. "Was starting to run low, now we shouldn't be in such poor shape if we run into any more of those leech zombies."

"Do you remember that painting in the study? The one with the old man and the candle?"

Billy nods, an expression of slight confusion on his face as though he doesn't quite recall what Rebecca is talking about but he gamely plays along.

"There was an unlit candle there! I bet now that we have fluid to spare we can unlock the door there- and that might lead to an exit, or answers, or if nothing else, more keys. Come on!"

Rebecca grabs Billy's wrist and drags him along at a full tilt run and Billy can't help but be pulled along. A clearly defined goal in mind seemed to boost Rebecca's flagging spirits and seeing Rebecca so focused inspired Billy in turn.

_It wouldn't kill us to be optimistic- everything else is doing a fine job at that. _Billy thinks as they re-enter the study. Rebecca hadn't let go of his hand their entire sprint through the hallways and Billy is sorry when her hand untangles from his.

She brushes dust and spider webs clinging to the frame of the painting and peers at the writing inscribed beneath it.

"This light shall guide you to a greater truth," she recites as Billy gently holds the flame to the candle tip. It sparks to life before them and they hear the familiar sound of a locking mechanism being released, gears turning. Rebecca tests the door to find that the knob turns and, right hand firmly on the grip of her Beretta, she pushes it open.

"What do you want to bet that 'greater truth' means 'zombies'?" Billy asks behind her.

The locked door led into a small study, bookshelves filled to the brim sitting next to a computer desk with a monitor that lights the room in a dim glow, a computer that, knowing their luck, likely has encrypted files. To their right on a small raised landing are more bookshelves, but their attention is drawn away from that at the two zombies in front them, attired in ratty labcoats, kneeling on the floor as they mindlessly bite and scrabble at their dead colleague on the floor.

Sightless eyes turn on Billy and Rebecca and they lurch to their feet with a groan, arms outstretched. Rebecca draws her handgun and tries not to smile as Billy brings the shotgun up and lines his eyes up with the barrel.

"Told you."


End file.
